Jenkins: Bring in the Robots

Why accidents are rarer and humans more often at fault.

Not quite a decade ago, an experienced British Airways captain publicly complained about his airline's orders banning manual thrust control by its Airbus crews in normal flight.

Captain Malcolm Scott feared pilots would end up less prepared to fly the aircraft manually. He wrote in a pilots' publication: "This ban is likely to lead to further deskilling and further increase in errors. Without a significant change in the airline's policy, the inevitable response will be a complete ban on manual flying. . . . The public...